Pioneer Fil-Am comic returning to Vallejo

Stand-up nearing 30 years in business

He honed his stand-up comedy to the point where he coasted, “getting away with tongue and cheek stuff” for about 15 years.

“I started to challenge myself and get away from that,” Navarette said. “It was hard. I was doing really easy material and getting easy laughs. I got tired of the easy laughs. Now, the material caught up to where I am. I’m much older and live is very different than when I was 25.”

At 48, one of the United States’ first successful Filipino-American comics still travels extensively.

“Still seeing the world,” said Navarette, granting a phone interview from Portland, his home since 2009 after he left Hawaii.

“Cheaper cost of living, better schools,” Navarette said. “I’m back on the mainland.”

He’s also back in Vallejo, headlining the Empress Theatre on Friday, June 16. Navarette did the annual Pista sa Nayon celebration here in 2013 and 2009 and had appeared in a fundraiser at Bethel High School several years before that.

Now he has two kids of his own, one in elementary school, one in middle school.

“I started late,” Navarette said. “I didn’t have the patience early on.”

The eldest, a daughter, “just rolls her eyes” when her dad jokes around.

“The youngest, he’s a goofball himself,” Navarette said. “We work off each other.”

Though he’s promoted himself as the “premier Fil-Am comic” for years, not everyone gets the memo.

“I was at the Ice House in Pasadena and there was a bigger than usual Latino audience,” he said. “I think they were thrown off. They thought I was Mexican. I think they were pleasantly surprised. A lot of us do intermarry. There are a lot of ‘Mexipinos.’”

Despite an influx of non-white stand-up comics in the states during the last 10 or 15 years, Navarette still finds himself in demand.

“People always are going to want a little diversity,” he said.

Navarette isn’t only familiar to Vallejoans, he’s made a few stops at Cache Creek Resort about an hour away in Brooks and was also popular at what was Pepper Belly’s in Fairfield. Pepper Belly’s went up flames January, 2013.

“The weekend after I was there,” said Navarette.

Two years earlier, a shooting at the club left a Vallejo man in serious condition.

Again, “it was a week after I had done the club,” Navarette said.

Empress general manager Kevin Frazier must be getting a bit nervous around now.

Navarette is back after “a string of shows” in Manila where he’s become legendary as a comic and mentor to up-and-coming Filipino comedians.

Since 2002, he’s been bringing comics to the Philippines. In the last five years, there’s been a significant upswing in local comics getting serious about the business, Navarette said.

“I get to be their mentor,” he said. “I get to work with them. It’s nice. And I put them on the road. You learn by doing.”

Navarette was mostly self-taught as he came through San Francisco in the early 1990s. Since then, he’s churned out four albums — “Husky Boy,” “Badly Browned,” “Live at Cobb’s” and “Bastos” — plus a DVD, “The Comedy of Rex Navarette.”

Since he started, “there are a lot more Filipino-American comedians,” Navarette said. “Maybe too many of us fighting for same venues, same audiences.”

Fortunately, “I created my audience and venues,” he said, grateful having returned to the same venues for five or 10 years.

Navarette said he can always tell the fans who have been with him from the start.

“They’re the ones who are upset if I don’t remember the material I did 25 years ago,” he said.

Though comedy is his living, it’s definitely not all of Navarette’s life.

“I don’t go to comedy clubs to hang out, eve when I was younger,” he said. “A lot of stand-ups are lazy. They don’t have lives. It’s sad. I’ve got to go and do something. Otherwise, there’s nothing to write about.”

Rex Navarette is at the Empress Theatre, 330 Virginia St., Vallejo, on Friday, June 16, 8 p.m. Admission $20 advance/online, $25 by phone or at the door. For more, call (707) 552-2400 or visit empresstheatre.org.